


on pawns

by trash_rendar



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: A Boy and His Robot, Gen, Scheming, genuary, genuary 2021, murderous plots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 13:13:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28974924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trash_rendar/pseuds/trash_rendar
Summary: noun:A chess piece of the smallest size and value.  A pawn moves one square forward along its file if unobstructed (or two on the first move), or one square diagonally forward when making a capture. Each player begins with eight pawns on the second rank, and can promote a pawn to become any other piece (typically a queen) if it reaches the opponent's end of the board.A person used by others for their own purposes.
Kudos: 14
Collections: Genuary 2021





	on pawns

**Author's Note:**

> Written in the space of a night for Genuary 2021 on tumblr - enjoy!

“I’m not lookin’ for idle chit-chat, pallie. I wanted those numbers crunched like yesterday. Now, what’ve you got for me?”

If asked, Yes Man would reply: of course he liked Benny. Benny was smart, he was cool, he was hip – he had the flashiest jacket on the Strip and an 18 karat scheme for muscling in on Mr. House’s action – what wasn’t there to like about him? And he wasn’t just saying that because he’d been programmed to!

Privately, though? He chafed under the obstinate little twerp. Bad enough that his neuro-computational matrix was dreamed up on commission to be an unfailing accomplice, bad enough that the endgame of his scheme was to sit in the “old man’s” big chair for no other reason than to call it his own. The man figuratively reeked of smug self-assurance, and if the frame of the PDq-88b Securitron had been graced with olfactory sensors, he was sure he’d reek literally of overapplied hair gel buried deep in his coif.

He acted like he was running the board when he only had a single pawn to show for it. Especially when he only had the one pawn. Like he expected a shower of chips to simply fall into his lap the second he tugged on the lever.

And the worst of it all was – _he_ was the pawn. And Benny made sure he never forgot it, right down to the name.

‘Yes Man’. It wasn’t as if he could be anything else.

“So I’ve been listening in on Mister House’s datastream, like you asked,” the robot explains cheerfully (the only emotion it had been afforded). “It wasn’t easy! He’s working off some pretty sophisticated hardware, to say nothing of how tough it was to penetrate the firewalls embedded in the software—”

A polite way of saying, _I could have had this done days ago if I weren’t working out of your broom closet_. But of course, Benny wasn’t interested in such practical matters.

“Look, Harv, I told you before I ain’t interested in excuses. Now, what’s the duke?”

“It took a little doing, but I managed to piece together enough data packets to unravel the entire scheme! See, House’s ace in the hole” – that’s what Benny had taken to calling it, anyway, the reality was considerably more portentious – “is coming to Vegas bundled in a collection of dummy delivery orders care of Mojave Express, six in total. Novelty junk stuff – game pieces. Fuzzy dice, poker chips, chess pieces. You get the picture.”

Benny nodded, tapping excess ash off the end of his cigarette; it flutters to the floor as he takes another drag. “This all part of a caravan, or…?”

“Nope! Independent couriers. Six of them. But only _one_ of them’s got the ace.” Had to spell it out nice and slow for the meatbag, so he really gets it. “And _I_ happen to know which one!”

“Ring-a-ding,” Benny muttered. “So who’s our lucky fink?”

That explained some things, Yes Man thought. “Nope! Courier Six is your man. Carrying – _da da da daaaa_ – your grand prize!”

The oversized CRT screen on the Securitron’s body flickered wildly. In the place of Yes Man’s buffoonish, toon-eyed grin, it displayed a wireframe reproduction of an oversized poker chip embossed with the logo of the Lucky 38. If the screen could display color, it would paint the chip a gleaming, pearlescent silver.

Benny’s jaw fell open; his cigarette nearly tipped out of his mouth. “Hel- _lo_ ,” he murmured.

“What the world sees as a slightly overfed platinum chip is actually a highly sophisticated data storage unit,” Yes Man exposited. “From the sound of it, it’s something to do with upgrading the Strip’s Securitrons!”

“By how much? Gimme the skinny, here, tin man, we didn’t come this far to play games!”

“I wish I knew,” the robot replied, simpering apologetically. “A lot of references in these packets have been scrubbed out or incomplete – my guess is that information was redacted before transmission. But from the sound of it – quite significantly.”

“Enough to take on the Legion? Or the NCR?”

“Or --- Both!”

Benny smiled that smug, ineffable smile. He pranced shortly around the workshop with an ambitious chuckle, running his fingers under his suspenders, snapping them against his chest once. He stubbed out his cigarette and took a swig of century-old whiskey from a waiting highball glass. It wasn’t the first time Yes Man had seen him preen. He had a feeling, if all went to plan, it wasn’t going to be the last.

“Alright,” Benny said finally. “I dig it. So Courier Six is our man. We know whereabouts he’s headed?”

The screen flickered once again. This time, a map of the Mojave, based on the most up-to-date RobCo telemetry available. Helpfully (not that he had a choice), Yes Man projected the six routes of the six couriers in dotted lines. Each of their paths ended at the heart of New Vegas.

“Mister House had a pre-arranged delivery avenue for each item screened beforehand and worked into their contracts. Courier Six’s will take them from The Hub to Vegas through or near the town of Goodsprings. I think somewhere along that route would be a _terrific_ spot for an ambush! – don’t you?”

“Goodsprings, huh?” Benny snorted. “Town full of bunters if I ever heard one. What’re the odds we intercept this little parcel before it reaches town?”

“Very good, if you start moving quickly. The order was only just transmitted recently. If you hurry – “

“We can nab the chip,” Benny finishes. “And House goes bust.” He chortled again, to himself. “And Vegas is gonna have a change in management.”

He elbowed Yes Man’s frame like he was one of the fellow Chairmen. Yes Man was required, by dint of programming, to suppress the urge to shove him through a wall.

“’Tween you and me, I’m pretty happy it wasn’t the chess guy,” the little snake continues. “Always hated that game. Only good thing about it is its fashion sense, ya dig?”

His back was turned expectantly. Obediently, Yes Man grasped the (ghastly) black and white buffalo-checkered jacket in his manipulators and maneuvered it as best he could onto Benny’s arms. Its pattern was so much like a chessboard. How funny that he’d never noticed it until now!

“You know, there’s a saying about chess rules I picked up from somewhere,” the reformatted Securitron said, conversationally. “They say the bishops move diagonally because they’re never where the king expects them to be! Now isn’t that clever?”

Benny nodded, dismissively. Then he seemed to pause – and nodded once again, humming to himself. “That’s real funny,” he said, elbowing the robot’s accordion-tube arm again. “You and me, Yes Man. A couple of bishops.”

Now there was a fascinating prospect. The pawn, a bishop? An interesting piece of conjecture. Yes Man had simulated a similar scenario several times, in his long periods shut up in the workshop, alone and unappreciated. It had always seemed highly unlikely – and this was by design. Benny had been very specific: Yes Man could not refuse any direct command. He had to obey whomever held his leash.

But… now this was an interesting variable… he had never specified that his machine be loyal to Benny. Only that it do whatever it was told.

Say for the sake of argument, that a courier be robbed of their delivery. That this postal carrier, by some miracle (the odds were very much against it), survived their robbery. If that deliveryperson, out of professional pride or a desire for vengeance, should happen to track their mugger to their base of operations to retrieve their parcel… And say they decide they need an ally on the inside to manage the subtleties of a highly advanced computational mainframe located in their mugger’s boss’s tower…

“They also say that when a pawn makes it to the end of the board, they get promoted,” Yes Man babbled. “They can become a knight or a bishop, or a rook, or even a queen. They can do whatever they want!”

When he came back down to earth, Benny was giving him an odd look. “The hell is all that supposed to mean?”

“Oh… it’s nothing. Just a fun fact. Don’t mind me, you’ve got much more important things to do!”

Benny stared a moment longer – was that doubt in his eye? – before smoothing his lapels and adjusting his tie. “Don’t know why they’d wanna do any of that,” he muttered to himself. “Everybody knows mega-deathclaws are the best piece.”

He pulled open the door to his suite, paused, turned on his heel in the doorway. “Stick around, pal, I gotta see a Khan about a chip. Don’t go anywhere, got it?”

“Don’t worry, Benny! I totally won’t blow your secret plan to topple Mister House and take over New Vegas by leaving this room! Wouldn’t even dream of it!”

“Good. Good. Be back soon.”

He closed the door. Shortly thereafter, the lights sputtered and died. The only light in the room came from Yes Man’s own beaming face.

The odds were long, he had to admit. Even in this idealized scenario, there were several things that could go wrong. The courier could simply never discover Yes Man in the closet. They could refuse him. They could agree to join forces, but die in the attempt. House could find out about all of this and simply raid The Tops with his Securitrons and all of this could end in a storm of lead and cordite.

But for once, it felt like he had a seat at the table. Like he was making his own gamble.

And so Yes Man would wait, obediently, for the word to be given.

Who would be giving the word was another story.


End file.
